A Nation of Deadbeats

Pundits have argued that the 2008 financial crisis was the first crash in
American history caused by consumer debt. But in this spirited, highly
engaging account, Scott Reynolds Nelson demonstrates that consumer debt
has underpinned almost every major financial panic in the nation’s
history.

From William Duer’s attempts to profit from the country’s
post-Revolutionary War debt to an 1815 plan to sell English coats to
Americans on credit, to the debt-fueled railroad expansion that
precipitated the 1857 crash: in each case, the chain of banks, brokers,
moneylenders, and insurance companies that separated borrowers and
lenders made it impossible to distinguish good loans from bad.

Bound up
in this history are stories of national banks funded by smugglers,
fistfights in Congress over the gold standard, America’s early
dependence on British bankers, and how presidential campaigns were
forged in controversies over private debt. An irreverent, wholly
accessible, eye-opening book.

Praise for Scott Reynolds Nelson’s A Nation of Deadbeats

“A
fascinating historical narrative. . . . This revisionist account is
eminently readable, in large part because Nelson offers flesh-and-blood
examples rather than relying on abstractions.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“Lucid.
. . . This astute account of economic disruption and disaster through
the Great Depression is a useful and engaging perspective on our
propensity for repeating our financial mistakes.”
—Publishers Weekly

“This
might not qualify as 100% pure revisionist history, but it is certainly
unconventional history, and hooray for that. . . . History focusing on
the losers instead of the winners is especially effective. . . . A Nation of Deadbeats is
especially timely, coming as it does during a nationwide and worldwide
economic slowdown of at least four years duration and counting. . . .
Even if those debtors are sometimes the victims of circumstances beyond
their total control, they nonetheless can start ripples in the economy
that become tidal waves.”
—USA Today

“Exceptionally
readable. . . . [Nelson] has painstakingly extracted the sensational
details from the mucky ore of the history of financial crises in the
U.S., welding them together. . . . Well worth reading—particularly as it
is larded with entertaining characters and powerful citations.”
—New York Journal of Books